1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an electronic cash register (which is hereinafter referred to as "ECR") which contains a PLU (price look-up) file designed to store the specific parameter values associated with each class of commercial commodity item as the PLU data (such as the item price value, the number of entries, the item name, etc.).
2. Description of the Prior Art
There is known an ECR that provides the PLU recording facilities (which are, by definition, those functions that allow every sold item to be recorded by referencing the relevant PLU data stored in the PLU file). However, the kind of the price for each item that can be set and stored as the PLU data by the conventional machine is limited to one (which price is referred to as "tag price not discounted" or "fixed price"). It does not allow the price for a particular item to be sold at a discount to be keyed-in directly from the keyboard. When the discount item is recorded, therefore, it is the practice that the applicable discount rate for its fixed price is entered into the ECR, from which the ECR calculates the new price (discounted price) and displays its output (actual sales price). For the customer using the coupon ticket, when the items sold and temporarily paid for by that customer are recorded, the applicable discount amount or discount rate that the customer benefits from his or her coupon ticket is entered into the ECR, from which the ECR also calculates the discounted sales price. As the discounted sales price cannot be entered directly, as described above, it is required that at the time of recording the sold items, the operator calculate the applicable discount amount or discount rate manually or with any appropriate calculator and enter the result into the ECR, particularly when the tags for the discount items only show the discount price (sales price).
Although the conventional ECR may allow its calculated discount sales price to be provided on the display whenever the discount rate is applied for each particular item, it is impossible to obtain it on the hardcopy such as the receipt slip and the audit journal (which is kept by the shop for later auditing purposes), which only reflects the fixed price for the item. As such, the actual sales prices cannot be determined readily by looking at those hardcopies when they must be examined later.